Shauna Cooke

Name: Shauna Cooke

Gender: Female

Age: 18

Grade: 12

School: George Hunter High

Hobbies and Interests: Comic books, comic movies, fanfiction, drawing, basketball

Appearance: A spindly 5'10" and 122 lbs, puberty stretched Shauna out without giving either her bulk or her tone any opportunity to catch up, though she's more elongated than emaciated. She is mixed race, with black, heavily textured hair and light brown skin. Her lower cheeks, jawline and parts of her neck are significantly marked with congenital dark blemishes, which she is extremely self-conscious about. Finding the mixed results from attempting to cover them with makeup to not be worth the time and money, Shauna instead tries to draw attention away from the marks by wearing extra-large prescription glasses, neckerchiefs, scarfs and turtlenecks, and by keeping her hair shoulder-length. Said hair is another source of frustration to her, as she finds that is easily damaged and high-maintenance even as she lacks the confidence for any shorter cuts and thinks that braided styles don't suit her. She has experimented with many different ways of tying it up during sports, but the hunt continues for one that she actually likes. Her eyes are a strikingly light brown. Her facial features are for the most part angular, with noticable cheek bones and a blocky jaw, the exception being her nose, which is short and snubbed.

Shauna dresses in fairly neutral and drab clothing in a deliberate attempt to avoid notice and very rarely dresses up. When she was abducted, Shauna was wearing a baggy grey sweater, grey camo-patterned cargo pants, and an old pair of sneakers. She also wore her glasses and a neck warmer.

Biography: Shauna is the younger of two girls born to Greg and Yvonne Cooke, an insurance salesman and an office clerk. Her sister, Serena, is six years older than her. The couple moved to Chattanooga not long after getting married out of a mutual desire to get out from under their parents' feet, and Serena was born around five years after they settled down into steady work. In many ways, Shauna's childhood was the product of hard lessons learned from her older sister, as the two of them made frequent errors of judgement in their parenting. When Shauna came along, her parents were much better positioned to deal with tantrums, teaching and engaging with their child, and they put that knowledge to good use. Unfortunately, Serena was headstrong and stubborn and resented Shauna; some of Shauna's earliest memories involve her older sister picking on her, taking her toys, pulling her hair and pushing her around. Although the girls' parents tried to intervene, they were widely incapable of getting Serena under control, Yvonne in particular guilty of a soft-touch style of parenting that did nothing to rein Serena in. Shauna quickly learned that yelling for her dad would get the best results, which just led Serena to be sneakier and more mean-spirited in her bullying.

In spite of this, Shauna grew up reasonably adjusted and socialised, although she did struggle with situations when other children became aggressive or even very excited around her, evoking as it did unfavourable comparisons to her sister. She found that she preferred her own company moreso than most, especially coming up with daydreamy stories and scribbled doodles to go along with them. From time to time, Shauna would involve other kids in this make-believe play, but would quickly grow confused, saddened and frustrated when they tried to add their own embellishments and changes to the narrative, and Shauna soon stopped with this.

As Shauna reached nine years old, Serena's behaviour became significantly worse, plunging over the cliff from anti-social to outright delinquent. Arguments between Serena and their parents became a nightly occurrence when Serena bothered to come home at all, and Shauna wasn't spared from the firing line as Serena would take out her frustrations by yelling at her, too. Deeply intimidated, Shauna would often go to bed in tears, and she became withdrawn and listless at school. This was noticed by the faculty, several members of which were aware of the Cookes' situation with Serena, and the family had a number of meetings with school staff. Taking advice that a change of scenery was required, the Cookes allowed Serena to go to a summer camp, which also gave Shauna a well-needed reprieve from her older sister's bullying. When Serena returned eight weeks later, she had a better handle on her emotions and herself in general, and the arguments waned, though they never entirely went away.

In this time, Shauna further developed her enjoyment of both storytelling and drawing, and began to write and illustrate her own little stories. Thanks to Shauna's reluctance to share any of them, it wasn't until her father was helping her tidy her room that he discovered page after page of drawings. Enthused, lifelong Marvel fan Greg introduced her to the world of comic books, and it quickly became a point of bonding between the two of them as Greg shared all his older books with his daughter and encouraged the interest. Shauna was fascinated by the larger-than-life characters and emboldened by the realisation that it wasn't weird to like these kinds of stories. She remains fond of Marvel comic books, especially Spiderman and Captain Marvel, but has branched out into other areas of interest outside of superheroes and follows less-mainstream publications too. Her father and her have made a tradition of watching every new MCU movie on release day.

Her interest in her own art and writing grew along with comic book fandom. Shauna found that while she loved reading about superheroes and demons and knights and spacecraft, that she struggled to find many characters that she could personally relate to. There didn't seem to be much in the way of characters with her mixed background, or stories that tackled what it was like growing up with one black and one white parent, or, as she became a teenager, having an awkward growth spurt and suddenly finding it much more difficult to not be the centre of attention. In her search for media she could better relate to, Shauna stumbled across fanfiction online, and was instantly enthralled, especially when she discovered the popularity of 'fix-it' as a genre to cover for the perceived errors of the actual writers. As a result, Shauna started to write about the characters and stories she liked but including extras, such as adding a mixed-race character to the cast of the X-Men. Most of these characters bear a more-than passing resemblance to Shauna herself, but she only writes about and draws them under strict pseudonyms on sites like Tumblr and Archive of Our Own. She shares her original work even less, only showing her ever-improving art to her father because of the closeness of their relationship and a desire not to let him down.

Shauna became involved in sports after hitting an enormous growth spurt at the age of eleven and shooting up several inches over the course of the next year. Already on the slim side, Shauna started to look very underweight for a while before her growth stablised. Her mother, still harbouring concerns over her confidence after the events of a few years ago, felt that Shauna needed a boost to her self-esteem. As such, Yvonne enrolled Shauna in a few different youth sports programs. Shauna didn't like the team games at all and had no natural skill for almost any of them. However, hesitant of disappointing her mother and being a 'bad kid' like Serena had been, Shauna stuck it out with the sport she was least-worst at, basketball. Over time, Shauna grew to like the sport more and became slightly less incompetent at it, though her main advantage continued to be her height. She was nudged into trying out for the George Hunter team when she got old enough, and to her own great surprise, managed to secure a spot on the roster. Unfortunately, the team's sheer strength means that an average-at-best player like Shauna is completely overshadowed, and most of the time she plays only relief minutes at the end of quarters or in 'garbage time' when games are already decided.

Shauna is a reserved presence around school, very self-conscious about her body and her appearance. As a result she tries to avoid attention, feeling that it's much easier to just blend into the background then try to deal with people being mean or cruel to her. She lacks tolerance for teasing and is easily upset by heckling or mean remarks. She has fairly critical confidence issues and doesn't like to speak up or put herself in compromising situations, and quickly grows dispirited when things aren't going her way. However, Shauna isn't a total shrinking violet, and around people that she's known a long while or feels are 'safe', she's more of an open book, and most animated when talking about her beloved comic books or movies, and will even have conversations about sports under the right circumstances. Indeed in these circumstances she is friendly and astute, albeit still completely unable to handle even playful needling. Her grades are good and she studies hard for every test and assignment, constantly worrying that she will cause her parents the same stresses Serena did. She excels at art, which, although she tries not to advertise it, is still probably one of the worst-kept secrets in the school due to her habit of doodling in her sketchbooks and the front of her school exercise books.

Her relationship with her family is mixed; her father and her have a great bond that has only grown stronger with time, and in her creative pursuits he is very much her number one fan. Conversely, Shauna isn't quite as close with her mother; though it could be considered as quite a normal mother-daughter relationship, Shauna struggles with the idea of confiding in her mom and doesn't often open up to her. The main barrier between Shauna and her parents is her complex over letting them down; the arguments which persisted through her childhood had a profound effect on her, and Shauna is terrified by the idea of creating arguments. However, this means that she is constantly on tenterhooks about any tiny misstep or pushing of boundaries, something which only gets worse because she feels talking to her parents about the anxieties would be self-defeating. She often second-guesses herself and will catastrophise needlessly, blowing minor incidents out of all proportion. She has very little contact with her older sister, who dropped out of school and after one final blazing argument, moved in with an older friend. Shauna's parents reach out enough that Shauna knows that nothing horrible has happened to Serena, but their relationship has never really been repaired.

Shauna is planning to go to community college after graduation, as she doesn't want to leave town to study and was reluctant to draw on her parents' generosity to pay for full college tuition. She is also aware that it would have stretched the family's resources to the limit. She has an agreement in principle for some interning at her dad's place of work once she graduates, and plans to look for full time employment during that.

Advantages: Next to nobody is going to believe that the non-confrontational and conflict-averse Shauna will be willing or able to hurt someone, which will make it easier for others to either trust her or discount her as a threat. Although hardly an elite sportsman, she has some level of athletic ability and fitness.

Disadvantages: Shauna is ill-equipped to deal with the stresses of SOTF; she is already far from robust, and in such an extreme situation her ability to cope is in question. She does not deal well with confrontation or aggression, and could easily be intimidated and overpowered through personality and force of will alone. Shauna lacks conviction or confidence, and is unlikely to be able to take charge or seize an encounter by the scruff of the neck, leaving her to flounder behind stronger personalities. Even should she find herself in an advantageous person, her own self doubts could easily result in her sabotaging herself.

Designated Number: Female Student No. 69

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Designated Weapon: Pata

Conclusion: If you already crumple like wet tissue paper in the face of day-to-day adversity there's not much more to say here. G069 may ride in the wake of stronger contestants for a while, but she's more likely to be an early out. - Christina Stockton

'The above biography is as written by Namira. No edits or alterations to the author's original work have been made.'

Evaluations
Handled by: Namira

Kills: 

Killed By: 

Collected Weapons: Pata (assigned weapon)

Allies: 

Enemies: 

Mid-game Evaluation: 

Post-Game Evaluation: 

Memorable Quotes:

Threads
Below is a list of threads containing Shauna, in chronological order.

The Past V7:
 * Slush in her Veins
 * Welcome To The Fucking Monkey House

Your Thoughts
''Whether you were a fellow handler in SOTF or just an avid reader of the site, we'd like to know what you thought about Shauna Cooke. What did you like, or dislike, about the character? Let us know here!''